


Sputnik

by hitlikehammers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Angsty Schmoop, Brock Rumlow is a Menace, Bucky Barnes Feels, Captain America: Civil War Trailer, Conditioning, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers Feels, True Love, trigger phrases
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-19 10:48:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5964520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The phrase is black and cream-colored, dust-covered, age-addled: some library book right after the ice. So it shouldn’t be the thing that ends Steve’s world between heartbeats. It shouldn’t.</p><p>Funny, that word. <i>Shouldn’t.</i></p><p>That word is a son of a bitch, and Steve’s certain that this time, it <i>will</i> kill him.</p><p> </p><p>
  <span class="small">(Also known as: you offer me a working title? Slowly but surely, I will eventually write angsty schmoop.)</span>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, I just got this sort of thing stuck in my head. It then grew legs and ran away with itself. I stopped having the energy to stop that sort of thing ages ago, really, so: regardless of realism, what a trigger phrase would or wouldn’t be in the MCU, how it may or may not work in the MCU, whether or not it’s a good bet on if it makes sense to _have_ such a thing in the MCU—mere trivialities. 
> 
> Because what does any of that matter in the face of the potential for pure angsty schmoop?  
> (It doesn’t matter, in case you weren’t sure.)

The phrase is black and cream-colored, dust-covered, age-addled: some library book right after the ice, and it’s inconsequential. It doesn’t fit.

So it shouldn’t be the thing that ends Steve’s world between heartbeats. It shouldn’t.

Funny, that word. _Shouldn’t._

That word’s a son of a bitch, and Steve’s certain that this time, it _will_ kill him.

Because he never should have trusted any of them. He never should have left Rumlow a goddamn _chance_ at breathing.

Because he never should have said he’d come back, he’d do this, he’d fight for them—for any of them. Not at first, even though he was lost; definitely not after he saw, after he _knew_ ; after, against all odds and possibility and his most desperate prayers and pleas in the night, Bucky came _back_.

Because he should have died and this should have been done beneath the ice, like he’d meant it to be. Selfless, selfish, penance, need: it should have been _done_.

Because there hasn’t been a moment, since the moment he’d had reason to think it, that he hadn’t told himself he should have followed. He should have let go. He should have followed.

He never should have left Bucky alone. Not ever.

And that word, from those twisted burn-scarred lips, shouldn’t be the knife in his heart after all the ones in his back, no.

It shouldn’t.

“ _Sputnik_.”

It’s just a fucking _word_.

But when Bucky freezes, when Bucky’s eyes roll backward and leave only the whites— _the snow, the ice_—and his limbs go limp just a millisecond before he does— _there are no strings on me_—oh. 

Oh, but it’s the word that guts Steve straight through.

“ _Bucky_!”

The scream doesn’t even sound like it belongs to him; it’s not his voice that tears at the throat and draws blood from the air: no, no, and it’s not his lips that shape the asking, the begging when he runs, when he drops to his knees next to Bucky’s motionless form, eyes hauntingly wide, staring up but seeing nothing.

It’s not his eyes that cloud with tears as he reaches, and in the end can’t even _touch_ that neck, that chest, the absence of that beating heart because he doesn’t know what it’ll do to him. 

He doesn’t think he can even pretend to guess.

“History books got it wrong then, yeah?” Steve only just hears it, the edge of that bastard’s hateful _glee_ at bringing Steve down with a single word, the only thing in the world that Steve can’t take. 

“I was fucking well hoping,” Rumlow sneers. “You wear your goddamn heart on your sleeve, but you’re a tough nut to crack, Rogers. I figured that out quick enough.” 

And Steve misses a word here and there over the agony of the way that heart rages, the way that heart pounds itself toward oblivion as the moments pass, and Bucky doesn’t move. As the heat builds behind Steve’s eyes. As everything spins and the edges darken and Steve can’t fucking breathe, and his throat too goddamn _tight_.

“But that heart’s like a pulp after all these years, ain’t it, you pathetic bastard?” Rumlow prods, spits salt in the wound. “Not much blood left to squeeze out, not too many places left to feel the cut,” and he’s right, he’s fucking right, and Steve wants to sob, Steve wants to tear, Steve wants to choke the life out of that voice, that life, and trade it for the one snuffed at his feet—he wants to trade his own, if he has to. If that’s what it takes, because, because...

“And then, there was _him_.”

And _yeah, yeah him, him you fucker, you hateful monster, you, you—_

Steve’s _thoughts_ choke for the weight of it as he stares down at Bucky’s lifeless frame, and Steve—in the dark moments, in the shadows of what unfolded after the helicarrier, after the River, after the months and months of searching, of waiting and hoping and despairing and wanting, god, _wanting_ because Steve remembered the taste of fucking _air_ when he saw Bucky, even a Bucky who didn’t know him, even a Bucky who was broken and twisted and wrong, it was _Bucky_ and Steve could _feel_ it and it was sweet and light inside his chest for the first time, so strong he’d forgotten how to live with it, the force of being in a world that meant a damn thing at all: but in the dark hours, in the deep parts of those desperate times Steve wondered if it wouldn’t have been better, had that body that breathed him life stopped breathing at all in between moutainsides all those years ago and skipped the torment, the torture: the nightmare of then and the nightmares of now.

“Oh, shit, though,” Rumlow’s talking again, that bastard. Rumlow’s talking again and Steve wants to cave his skull in; Steve wants to break his neck. 

“When he started to come out, when he’d rear his goddamn head between the wipes and sticking him on ice? Hell,” Rumlow chuckles, and Steve loses himself in the implications, in the blank spots in a history, in a memory, in a life that this fuck in front of him holds in his hands.

Steve loses himself in wondering just how quickly this man would bleed out in front of him, where the best place to strike would be to make it painful; make it slow.

“But love’s a funny thing, ain’t it?” Rumlow muses, poison lacing every syllable, and Steve feels it seeping deep, and he’ll go down with it. He’s ready to be done, now. He can’t, he doesn’t _want_ to live through this, not again.

“And you in that fucking costume?” Rumlow cackles sharp. “Almost too easy.”

And Steve barely notices when the footsteps approach, when Rumlow bends to hiss in his ear, when Steve feels the idle flick of the barrel of a gun, just the side—debating, as it grazes the hair on his neck.

“He was _always_ gonna be the way to break you,” Rumlow breathes. “Your _Bucky_ ,” and he’s not wrong.

He’s not _wrong_.

Steve’s own gun’s in his hand, finger on the trigger before he even knows where he’s gonna shoot the bastard: head, maybe. Or maybe, maybe...

Maybe _heart_.

The shot itself rings loud.

Steve’s pulse, though.

That pounds louder.


	2. II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love to [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad), for the beta of course, and to whom I am also sorry for briefly pretending to have considered maybe killing Bucky.

Rumlow goes down: point-blank to the skull.

But Steve’s finger’s still trembling on the trigger.

“That _fucker_ ,” the growl of pure contempt rings out behind him: a spectre. A ghost. 

“Little prick wasn’t even authorized to know about that shit.” And Steve can barely breathe as a hand settles on his shoulder for leverage, as a figure casts a shadow over him as it stands, a gun in gloved fingers hanging loose in his peripheral vision; Steve can barely breathe, because he knows that voice, that touch. The shape of that shadow.

Steve can barely fucking _breathe_.

“Move your big ass head, lemme see,” and Steve feels a palm at his cheek, now, easing his head from blocking the view of a very dead Brock Rumlow. He lets it happen.

The palm is _warm_.

“Oh,” comes the disappointed huff from above him. “Well. Anticlimactic, but effective.” The palm goes away as the shadow shrugs. “Works, I guess.”

Steve starts to turn, but hesitates. His chest burns; _begs_.

“What?” and that voice so close to his heart, that voice that makes the world go ‘round; that voice rings out the indignant squawk like they’re twelve again, and Steve’s trying real hard to pretend to judge the way that Bucky’s kicked gravel in Bobbie Nelson’s face. 

“So I was hoping to get a shot that left him writhing for a while,” comes the justification, and Steve’s heart is pounding, Steve’s eyes are swimming. “Sue me.”

Steve can’t think, can’t move, can’t...

“Stevie?”

And Bucky— _Bucky_ , alive, and moving, and breathing, and watching him with concern and care and feeling—Bucky crouches down and cups his cheek again, this time with a tenderness that Steve can’t goddamn _stand_ in this moment, because it’ll break him, it is breaking him; Bucky crouches, and turns his head toward him, makes their eyes meet.

“Stevie,” Bucky breathes out, bewildered but so gentle, strokes Steve’s jaw with his thumb. “What is it?”

And Steve gasps before he can help it; Steve chokes before he can stop it. Steve shakes and Bucky puts both hands on him, now: steadies him, even though, even if—

“You, you were,” Steve shivers, stammers, clasps both hands over the one still soft on Steve’s face.

“You were _dead_.”

“Naw,” Bucky breathes, low with empathy and heartache that Steve dives headfirst into, because feeling is a thing that living people do; that breathing bodies show. 

“Well, maybe kinda, like a little?” Bucky adds, because he’s Bucky, and the technicalities and the mechanisms are his thing, his niche, and Bucky is Steve’s whole world—or else, the only parts he cares to save, and this is _Bucky_.

 _His_ Bucky.

And maybe it drives a knife through Steve to think about _kinda_ and _a little_ , but Bucky is here. Bucky is safe. Bucky was gone, again.

But Bucky’s _alive_.

“It’s mostly psychological, now,” Bucky shrugs, biting his lip in frustration on various levels—with the fact of it, with the weakness he hates, with the attempt not to frame it as a weakness that he’s still trying to grasp and Steve is entranced by it, Steve can’t help but stare and let it sink into the still-frantic beating of his heart. 

“Still a thing I gotta work through, but I came out quick, didn’t I?” Bucky asks, just a little proud for it. “Used to put me down for _hours_ , y’know. They made it a mental trigger, but then they had the arm release this paralytic that fucked me up good, but _then_ I dug that shit out, soon as I figured out what it was, and maybe I swiped some of the epinephrine derivative that half my intel on Stark had him yacking about the _genius_ of, so it’d snap me back quicker if worst came to worst, and like—”

“Oh my god.”

Steve doesn’t mean to speak, doesn’t mean to stop that perfect, endless, entirely unselfconscious ramble that is completely and wholly _Bucky_ , but the words fall out without his consent: an exclamation, a statement, a prayer of petition and a prayer of gratitude all at once as Steve reaches out, as he frames Bucky’s face now, and draws Bucky close enough to feel each breath against his lips.

“Oh my god, Buck,” Steve struggles to speak around the tightness, the tension in his throat. “ _Buck_.”

And he can’t say anything more, not just then, so he leans, and he takes Bucky’s mouth against his own and licks in and drinks deep to taste his beating, living heart, bites to sooth his bounding, coursing blood, and breathes him in because he’s the only air worth filling Steve’s lungs.

He’s the only one, the only thing. 

_Bucky_.

“I love you.”

And they don’t say it enough, really. The words. They don’t say it enough that Steve would have been able to sidestep _that_ regret if Bucky never moved again, never spoke again, was never warm again against Steve’s skin.

They feel it, they always have. They know that.

But they don’t _say_ it. 

And that’s not acceptable. That’s not something Steve could bring himself to overcome, at the end.

 _No_.

“I love you, I love you, and I don’t know how to do any of this without you,” Steve gasps, and the words loosen the fist around his heart that stuck for the _almost_ of it, the _could have_ and the _what if_. 

“And I never want to be where you aren’t and you, you,” he stammers and his hands trace every bit of Bucky he can reach until Bucky stills those hands and clasps them in both of his own: steady. Always the steady one. 

“You’re everything,” Steve moans, and he isn’t ashamed for the raw feeling in it, for the way it strips him bare. “You’re everything and I _love_ you.”

Bucky brings Steve’s hands to his lips, guides them to trace the shape of his mouth as he breathes, as Steve feels life taken in and whispered out against his hands while Bucky drops a kiss to each fingertip: wordless, but Steve remembers this. Remembers the ritual of it, the soft-slow-silent way Bucky used to let Steve discover he was alive after the worst fevers, after sickness settled in his chest.

Steve remembers, and he almost falls apart when Bucky’s hands draw Steve’s down his chest to feel it rise, to settle on the heavy thump of his heart through the skin.

“I thought I lost you,” Steve’s voice grates out, shakes uncontrollably. “Can’t keep losin’ you.”

And Steve turns his palms to meet Bucky’s, to lace their grasps and draw his hand to Steve’s chest, now. To feel in turn because it’s all there is.

Only truth left to give.

“Heart won’t take it, Buck,” Steve confesses, rough and true as his heart still pumps hard, scared, relieved and needy as hell with Bucky there, with Bucky real and solid and held close. 

“Ain’t nothing they coulda done to it to make up for that.”

And Bucky’s palm goes flat against the raging muscle under his touch, and his touch presses firm, almost hard: protection. Devotion.

Steve can fucking _feel_ it.

“Then we’ll have to make sure we stick together, huh? Make sure it keeps ticking,” Bucky presses hard against Steve’s pec, holds that heart heavy against his hand like the privilege he’s always thought it was, versus the burden it should have been, and Steve’s never stopped getting light headed with it, even when he didn’t have an illness of one sort of another to blame it on anymore. 

“End of the line might not be long enough.”

And when Steve inhales around those simple words, it’s shaky and small, and when Bucky’s hands go around his shoulders and pull him in, he’s grateful.

“C’mere.” And Steve doesn’t need to be told twice, just folds into Bucky’s arms, into his hold; closes his eyes and makes himself small, because he was scared. He was so fucking _scared_.

And he’s so goddamn in love, that it _will_ kill him. 

“You were the only warm thing in the cold, Steve,” Bucky speaks right into his ear, leans to kiss the pulse in his throat. “You’re the _only thing_.”

Steve shivers, whimpers maybe. His heart swells, even as it continues to pound.

“You _are_ love, you stupid punk,” Bucky breathes into him. “When I think of love, when I hear it, when I say it,” he exhales long and perfect against the line of Steve’s jaw. 

“It’s you, just you, filling my head.” Bucky puts his fingers on Steve’s chin and brings him up to kiss his lips. “It’s just _you_.”

And Steve kisses back like the world’s ending in favor of a better one. In favor of one where they say it, and they both breathe, and Steve’s heart slows, calms because it swims around those words, because it fills Bucky like Bucky fills _him_.

And Bucky still fills him, Bucky’s still everywhere and every little thing that makes him up and keeps him whole when he pulls back, hands firm against the softness in his eyes as he takes his thumbs and traces the corners of Steve’s red-loved lips.

“We got a war to fight, babydoll,” Bucky breathes, regret heavy in his tone as he makes to stand again and help Steve up in turn.

“No.”

Bucky stops at Steve’s protest.

“Not right now.” And Steve pulls him in again, feels as Bucky surveys their surroundings—they came for Rumlow alone, and Rumlow came alone in turn: they’re safe. For the moment. 

“Right now,” Steve breathes, muffled against Bucky’s chest: “just this.” And Bucky wraps his arms around him all the tighter as he sighs, goes boneless against that broad chest that rises, falls, and rises. 

“Just _us_.”

And Bucky exhales through Steve’s hair, presses his lips to the top of Steve’s head, and breathes. Keeps breathing.

“Alright,” Bucky tells him and leans back, flat on the ground and Steve follows, and his ground is Bucky’s lungs, Bucky’s heart against his ear. As it’s always been.

Always will be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr](hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
